That's Dodger, he was one of the people we'd harassed the night before on the moonlit ridge. As he put it when I apologized, "Hey, I understand the need to fuck." He was more wise in the ways of the sand dune than I, and he explained how the sand is at it's "maximum angle of repose", meaning it's stacked as steep as it can be without toppling over. I suppose the coarser the grain the less the angle, as, for example, rock piles aren't very steep. He also pointed out how this sand is about as fine as it could be without blowing away as dust or silt. As he put it, "It's just this side of cornstarch."

My AAA map calls these the "singing sand dunes", since when the sand slides in its mini avalanches it hums. The sound is like when you play a crystal wine glass with your finger and there's that moment just before it sings where there's that rubbing sound, but then the sound is also part didjeridoo, and part styrofoam rubbing against styrofoam. And then there's the simultaneous sound of wind. And if you're barefoot you can feel the dune vibrate just slightly and deeply, an amazing feeling as we walked along the ridge in the dark getting the dune to sing about every 10 minutes. As Dodger said, the dune was singing a lot this year.

We wallowed in the sand for a good hour or two, but you can only make so many sand angels before it's time to move on, so we mounted our communal snowboard and made our merry way.

Linoleum and snowboards slide really well on this sand, and snowboards move almost as well as on snow.

Here's me in my first snowboard experience ever. A week later I was pasting stickers with snowboard logos on everything and listening to alterna-rock and calling everyone my homies. Peace out.

It's an amazing feeling sliding down the dunes. And yes, snowboarding's a blast.